The Road Less Traveled
by AsianScaper
Summary: A J/C fic. Something drops down from the heavens, literally, to help Voyager on its way. This is for anyone who loves sap... Please r/r!


**Title:** _The Road Less Traveled_   
**Author:** AsianScaper   
**Disclaimer:** Star Trek: Voyager and its characters belong to Paramount. Fortunately, the story belongs to me.   
**Rating:** G   
**Category:** General/Romance   
**Feedback:** Friends, enemies: Send your comments or constructive criticism to asianscaper@edsamail.com.ph   
**Summary:** Something literally drops from the heavens to spread its good news.   
**Spoilers:** None   
**Archiving:** Anywhere, just tell me where it's at please.   
**Dedication:** To all the J/C shippers. For Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, and the rest of the wonderful cast who made this show possible. Thank you.   
**Author's Note:** May be extremely boring for those who like hard-action from our wonderful Voyager crew. This is a little more tame and utterly plot-less. Short vignette for all who seek to be drained of emotion. 

__________________

There were alleys upon alleys of ways to which a man could drown in fault and fill his lungs with the fury of daunting words. There were also roads within roads to which happiness spun a fateful web, spinning silken threads upon the warbling of any tongue. Then, there was the appalling path upon which daggers lay, littered with brambles from the rose bush, their rusting blades exposed and hungering for flesh to stumble upon it. What it did to words was to cut with the palpable silence of one who knew everything, yet could not speak. 

What path would he choose? The middle path, perhaps, where dragons lay and the self was elevated on an encrusted throne of mahogany and earth. Was there no middle path? It was a median from hell and heaven, where one need not suffer the pain in doubt or the joy in belief. But the price to pay was loathe to any man for who would want maggots to feed upon living flesh, or run after banners that held seamless voids, that odious blight of loving oneself? 

A man would not dip his gifted fingers upon this filth-laden earth but the poor stature of one who knew defeat and triumph in a coalesced second of despair, would tread upon the ground and allow his blood to pour. 

He had no use for mirth. It was but a fading dream. A dream within a dream, which haunted the shallow waters of his nightmares and brought about the depth of phantasms he did not desire. What words were there to this path. Even he could not speak before the road he wished to take for they seduced him to utter stillness. To suffer within the wake of tranquility. To shed the noise of a poignant tongue and swathe it with the urge to be submerged in dereliction. 

Man walked about the corridors of a choice he made whole-heartedly, the lights an adornment for an enlightened course. They blinked like silent ghosts, whispering fate into his mortal ears. He did not fear them, did not need to, for within the soundless rasping of these phantoms was the breadth of a living partisan who gifted all with life. 

Chakotay dropped the book he was reading, studying its surface so like the gaunt features of a man who knew nothing but the pang of eternal hunger. He held on to it to feel the mortality of all things that would someday join the matter of the universe, which did not cease in being undivided. In the throbbing realization of one who knew his own fleeting moments upon a stolid creation, he placed _Dante's Divine Comedy_ on the table beside him, sighing heavily. 

He did not know the perverse reason behind his Captain's insistence to read the book although he knew that somehow, in its own small way, it had created ripples in the tides of his thinking. 

"Computer, lights." 

His voice echoed the emptiness within the room, the apparent loneliness he did not wish to acknowledge. In his plight, he knew he would, once he beheld the features of someone who might love him, in the way he loved her. 

Shaking his head and berating himself for such thoughts, he clambered from the bed and took steps over the soft carpeting of his quarters. The computer had graciously lighted his way, and he walked about the soft reasoning of this ship he considered home. Touching the edges of the table he had laid his book upon, he took to studying the strange flight of the stars as they fluttered about the offing of warp space and sought to engender him with feelings of melancholy and awe. He watched silently, apprehensively, as they flew upon the backs of ebon creatures, equine animals that bespoke of the raven grasslands of time and space. They spoke to him of their transitory progress in his debilitated, temporal sight and he wished for something more mundane to brush his eyes that once more, he may feel peace. 

Smiling, he carefully dressed and marked the features of a confident man in the reflections of his mirror. 

Just as he was about to step from the recesses of his room, his communicator chirped, _"Bridge to Commander Chakotay."_

"Chakotay here," he answered briskly, astir on Voyager's arcades of technological hues, just as he had escaped the murmurs of his room. 

He noted the yellow lights above him and the soft resonance of the powerful vessel he was treading upon. Nodding pleasantly at the officers who came his way, he heard Tom Paris' voice on the comm. _"Commander, we need you on the bridge. I'm reading a strange anomaly just off our starboard side, some ten thousand kilometers away. It's slowly closing in and traveling at the same speed we are. I suspect it's following us."_

"Has the Captain been informed?" Chakotay asked, imagining Tom's mischievous eyes cloud up in guilt. 

_"No, sir. I didn't think of waking her after the deal with the Salsarra."_ Paris' youthful voice did nothing to mask the awareness to his own fault but Chakotay had been particularly specific when it came to the Captain's well being. He did not feel regret for his apparent concern and Chakotay was basking in relief even then. 

"Good. I'll be there in a minute. Chakotay out." 

He did not let his thoughts escape the soft murmuring of his mind but as he fought the belligerent qualities of it, the flash of auburn hair spun from the rays of a puissant god disturbed the river of his thoughts. The smile of a whispering goddess made the dew of doubt fade with a rising sun, and the voice of one who enthralled all to listen to her caught him in its enduring web. She spun cradles for those who needed comfort and rest, offered guileless sighs for the pain of others and unbridled laughter to those who needed theirs to be added upon. 

And he damned himself for the images such thoughts brought. There was no hope in that hapless quarter but he grasped the minute gleam, which polished the surface of such thinking. He would not abandon that place, not for the world, for within it was the assurance of beatitude in the smile of another. 

When he entered the turbolift, he was troubled. He had denied himself the fleeting gaiety in thoughts of bliss but they haunted him as ghosts would haunt the aggrieved perceptions of the living. 

"Computer, bridge." 

The turbolift moved and stopped as a new passenger sought his presence. It was B'Elanna, her eyes acknowledging him and her ridged forehead creasing slightly at the look of torment on his face. She incited the turbolift to move and Chakotay absently heeded the destination she was taking. 

"Are you all right, Commander?" she asked, her hair distracting him slightly as she moved in front of him. 

"Yes, I'm fine." 

Immediately, those lips twitched at the lie. "Tell me the truth, Chakotay. What's bothering you?" 

"Nothing," he answered. Finality marked his voice but the half-Klingon in B'Elanna did not consider his rank, or his unease. 

"What is it?" she asked patiently. "The Salsarra deal?" She noted the glint in his eye. "Maybe." 

B'Elanna was not one to ask after crewmembers, nor one to insist upon telling. It was never easy to read emotions but even B'Elanna's difficulty in reading sentiments did not hinder her from tracing the chagrin on Chakotay's face. They had been together for too long, forever sharing tales that spanned a lifetime. B'Elanna knew Chakotay's book to the very letter for he had let her read the pages as she saw fit. In that manner, he trusted her completely and he knew that when she asked after him, it was because she truly cared. 

He put a weary hand on his face, massaging his temples and fighting for control over the conversation. He knew where it was going and he wanted none of it. 

"Oh, let me guess," B'Elanna quipped before he could say anything as she expressed a distant frown and a contemplative set of her jaw. "The Captain perhaps?" 

Chakotay's defenses leapt from their place and left him wallowing in B'Elanna's exacting guess. There was the flash of acquiescence in B'Elanna's expression, her minute smile, which told of things he did not want to know. His own silence, much as he regretted it then, ended the conversation completely. 

"Right. I think our morale officer has some major work to do." She smiled sympathetically as the turbolift doors opened in engineering. As she left his presence, she told him, "I'll be giving you my report at oh-eight hundred hours. Good day, Commander." 

He had nothing to say as he watched her departing figure. The doors closed behind her as she went and he sighed inwardly, knowing that he had no secrets when it came to emotions that wheedled every crumb of concern and devotion from his heart. Was it so evident to the crew? Or was it because B'Elanna knew him too well to suspect everything? 

"Resume," he whispered and the turbolift recovered from stillness to once more bring him to his destination. 

When he stepped into the bridge, he was awash with the sensibility of command and the mishap he had encountered earlier cowered in the corners of his control. 

Straightening his uniform, he hesitated momentarily as he glimpsed at the captain's chair adjoining his own. The little known space between his and her neighboring chair did nothing to ease the rising lump in his throat. He forced himself to sit on the Commander's chair and grab the reigns of ordinance. 

The viewscreen was filled with a starfield and a rather puny ball of energy that flashed brilliant colors of blue and violet like lightning. They swirled in circular motion, wrapping around each other to form a sphere of blinding light. 

"What do you think it is, Lieutenant Tuvok?" 

"It is a disruption in the space-time continuum. If my readings are correct, it will disappear shortly." The Vulcan was painfully concise and his voice dripping with logic did nothing to ease Chakotay. Yet, oftentimes, Tuvok provided a pillar of stability from the gnome of surprises dwelling in the bridge. 

"Alright." Chakotay leaned back on his chair to think for a moment before saying, "When will it intercept our trajectory, Lieutenant Paris?" 

"In half an hour, Commander." 

"Good. Maintain our heading for the next fifteen minutes and if it does anything suspicious, we'll divert from the original course. For now, let's not inform the Captain just yet." 

"Aye, aye, Commander." 

*** 

Stars hastened their pace within the painting of this ethereal window and they seemed to brush the surface of it with soft whispers of transient promises. Life within the circle of life that twitched inside their myriad concerns. A passing planet there, a miniscule breath of an asteroid here, the gentle sighs of galactic wind that bore the souls of nebulae scattered about the backdrop of transitory zephyrs from the mounts of God. Pillars arose with every beat of the cosmos' wings, bringing the universe to expand on itself, to share into the nothingness, which escaped comprehension or any ideal brought about by the world it created. 

Such feelings of depth would not leave the dreams of one who had witnessed the very birth of stars and traversed the rivers of flowing, heavenly energy, unifying its parts to become cradles of being. Planets, whose surface would erupt with an abrupt joy at having been created, nurturing its surface with cantankerous boils of leaden ruby that life would drink of its warmed milk. 

A mother had to nurture all these and she watched with the blind eye of space, with the wisdom of ever-changing stars, and the charity of one who could destroy and create her very image to the likes of necessity. 

Perhaps, if dreams flowed with such congruity to the vast ocean of ebon awareness, she would dream well and never hear the distant shouts of those who died at a universe's uncaring wake. 

"Kathryn…" 

A soft whisper, then, "Kathryn…" 

It chided with words of faraway trees, drifting lakes, colossal mountains; an image of an emerald sphere that swirled with the essence of life. But certain tales did not last long and this one certainly did not. 

"Kathryn!" 

A terrified shout filled with the harsh wolves of survival, then, "Kathryn!" 

It chided with words of distant blights, of diseases that ate at the pith of starving, human souls, of marked men who could never escape fate's roving eye. Was she to give up, as she had never done? 

_Wake you fool!_

And she did. 

*** 

_"Janeway to Chakotay."_

"Chakotay here." 

_"Care to tell me what's happening up there?"_

"Nothing much, Captain. Just a space-time distortion following us. Nothing you should worry about." 

_"I'll be there in five. Janeway out."_

His communicator went silent but he could still hear the echo of confusion in her voice, the weeping of dreams, the gasp from betrayal, the break in tranquility's fragile glass. He did not wish to think of it but when thoughts pervaded his mind, it would most certainly be of the harsh beating of guttural waves, wrenching anger from the rough property of sand. 

What dreams had troubled her so? He wished…yet, the waves did not hear his muttered plea and swallowed his voice whole instead. He wished many things but the golden chains of principle and order binding the universe had no place in his dreams. 

Before the turbolift opened, he was on his feet, aware of the weight within his legs, aware of his strange cognizance to the minute breathing of the ship and its odd concern for his behavior. At times, Voyager would caress the warmth of the body which connected him to her and would tell him of confidence that played games behind the blanket of hide and seek. 

Immaterial ships brought with it the timeless vessels of their fates, the people who gave it life, the people who gave it meaning with every stroke of the engineer's hand, with every caress from the navigator's certainty. There was power in that responsibility, and responsibility in that power. So he stood to feel the reality beneath him, which spoke in soft tones of machinery and the paltry hues of a past filled with apparitions. 

Captain Kathryn Janeway stepped into the bridge, smiling faintly at Chakotay before proceeding to pat Paris' shoulder in acknowledgement. 

He heard her ask stolidly about the aberration, constantly reminded of a riddle she personified. The riddle of pain, the question happily unanswered with every glance, with every touch. The glimmer of hope in every smile, the murder of it in every perfidy. As she moved from Paris' post to look at Harry Kim's console, he had felt the soft quality of her cheeks, pallid from concern, rosy from the life of those around her. The torch of responsibility to illumine the path of doubt, the wicked voices of Odysseus and the curse of Aeneas. He admired the way she burned her fingers as she lit the road for them…for him, and he ached to hold them for her, to kiss them. 

Again, thoughts he could not afford. So he tore his eyes from her and watched as the anomaly drew closer and closer, drawing the fibers of his being as if to say that it was there for a reason. It was compelling, as if it called with unearthly music. There was beauty in the universe such as the beauty of souls and this one called out with the profundity of one. It swayed to capers like a tree against the gale and laughed at their awe with tendrils moving in symmetry to birds. 

Janeway, as he was accustomed to calling her, stared at it complacently like it had visited her countless times. 

"What do you think it is, Chakotay?" she asked him. 

He cleared his throat, stealing a glance of her determined jaw, saddened that she would hide its capability to dip words in tenderness. 

"I can't tell you anything you don't already know, Captain." 

There was a contemplative frown that spoke of age and the starvation from the touch of a soft hand, a delicate hand made to wipe the asperity from it. 

But to plant ardor upon one's garden did not mean the touch of the gardener's hand on a delicate stem, or the soft kisses of his lips upon the gentle dances of rose petals. It meant words that fed strength and not pilfered it; it meant the bountiful recompense of deeds without need for reward. It meant a faith in the wind as well as in the soil that held her. It meant a sacrifice of hands, feet, body, mind, intellect and soul that did not daunt him for a prize that surpassed even his own mortality. 

He was happy to merely stand with the sound her voice, with the wind of her pride in its music, with the sound of laughter, with the frequent hand that visited his shoulder to assure him, serving as material earth that was subject to decay. 

Without touch, there would be all; without wind or water, without her soul to provide geometry like the stars, there was nothing. No guide, no science. The prospects of it frightened him. 

"Well, we haven't much time. Get everything you can from it, Mr. Tuvok and just to be safe, we'll be altering course in three minutes. Mr. Paris, make sure it doesn't follow us halfway to the Alpha Quadrant." 

"Yes, Captain." 

Janeway sighed heavily, the invisible burden apparent to Chakotay. She sat on her chair, to the right of him, and said not a word as the fire of curiosity lit her eyes and, with movements not noticeable to someone who had not graced her presence as often as he had, she revealed impatience. 

"Not exactly my idea of an eventful day," he offered. 

She patted his shoulder in reassurance and it was enough for him to spend it at confusion's table in silent repose. 

"Not mine, either." They shared a smile and it spanned through the short seconds, lasted like a web spun from the firmaments of time and space. "We'll see if this thing is bent on giving us trouble. Tell us when you're ready, Mr. Tuvok." 

"Captain, we're receiving a subspace transmission from…" Tom Paris' voice denoted confusion. _"Everywhere."_

Janeway frowned. "Let's hear it." 

  
_If love could fall   
Like rich leaves in an autumn day   
For change, change not like the widow's shawl   
Unmoved to hands like hardened clay_

  
It spoke of stability beyond the change this universe was subject to. It spoke of love that fell with auburn leaves of passion and belief, of age and change, but remained unmoved to every treason from the lecher's tongue. Treason, even from the mouth of the lover, for the soul would remain unchanged to tides that desire moved. 

The bridge was very quiet. There was a melodious note that spun its brothers and sisters into a sad descant and this one wove silence into the hearts of the bridge crew where only their breathing purged the room of serenity. 

"Was that a poem in English?" Paris whispered reverently. 

"I'd be dreaming if it wasn't," Janeway managed through her amusement. "Who would be sending us love poetry in this part of the galaxy?" 

That caused a number of people to smile, Tuvok excluded, who broke the air rudely by saying, "Captain, this anomaly we have dismissed as a disruption, may indeed be a communicating device." 

"I've considered that, Mr. Tuvok. Tom, drop from warp. I want to see if this thing is going to stop." 

The warp field halted its progress to reveal constant, unmoving pins of light. When they did so, the object of their concern, still wrapped in its energy, settled alongside them. 

"That's nice," Paris muttered. "Power readings from the object are off the scale." 

"Another message is coming through, Captain." 

Tuvok took the liberty of opening the ship's comm for everyone to hear. 

  
_If love could fall   
Past winds of mortal whim and time   
Stay bright like the summer sun and then   
Ne'er rest 'gainst the Sickle's chime_

  
Chakotay was as baffled as any of them but instead of focusing on their confusion, he was silently amused at the meaning this "message" conveyed. 

Eternity within the confines of death. A love that did not die with the claimant of Death's poisoned cup. What messages were these that they stung the human soul and made it seek the truth within the walls of words enclosing this piece of uttered literature? How could something so ancient drift past the winds of time and walk the well-traveled road of emotions? 

Janeway was perplexed. "Computer," she called. "Search Voyager's libraries for a poem matching this one." 

"None found." 

She frowned. 

  
_If love could fall   
Once hope but shies and fades away   
When oak trees' limbs fall by blade and cry   
As it weaves down the fading way_

  
It was said that when hope fades, love endures. Through every pain that sends material dew to kiss the lea of doubt, there was the effervescent breath of angels who accompanied the flight of the sun's chariot. Through every death that immovable oaks endured, the leaves would fall and crunch beneath any man's foot, to leave impressions on sand. To live forever… 

"If love could fall…" Janeway whispered, biting her lip. "That's an odd way to start a poem." She turned to Tuvok. "Record everything you get from this…communication device. I have an odd feeling that it's trying to tell us something." 

But everyone on the bridge knew what this was about. It was reflecting certain feelings that prodded to be felt. In a way, they had all forgotten how it was like to be watched from the outside with the understanding of one who knew humanity too well. They had forgotten to see through the looking glass from without…and not within. 

  
_If love could fall   
As every tear betwixt us yields   
Yawns, a sigh, a roar for now as when   
Lips move to tale of darker fields_

  
Dark fables, dark stories, dark fairy tales that strew the meadow of cultivated wisdom. And if love would indeed fall for every moment of impatience, of frustration, of anger, then words of iniquity would mean nothing. 

The silence was almost a necessity now. Their journey provided many words, many expressions of disbelief and faith, of love and hate. 

Janeway smiled at the insight it provided and was strangely disturbed. 

  
_If love could fall   
And bite 'gainst every falling foot   
That treads towards strife to bury pain   
Not act in spite but strike the lute_

  
Ensign Kim smiled. 

To never submit to anger. To never submit to hate, which encumbers the faculty of human reason and plants bane like common seeds. This thing spoke to them of things it could not possibly understand, but it all rang with certainty, with truth, with integrity that humanity knew all too well. Humanity had been born with rifts in his nature, only to perfect himself through morals and his own drive to live…through his love, his hope, his boundless charity. 

  
_Oh! Fade, fade, fade!   
Fall not but change! _

Nay! Change not but fall,   
That thee, thy heart and soul   
Answer to every call   
Amen. Amen.   
And then we fall… 

  
And it flickered from existence. 

"If love could fall…" Chakotay whispered, catching his Captain's eye. They knew, as the rest of the crew did, that love fell from the eaves of eternity, just as this tiny object had. 

They knew they would reach home. For hope was rooted in love and this thing that spoke of it, that flowed verses from its fiery rivulets of green and blue energy, had given them the pillars of joy in suffering, the light within the darkness of nightfall. 

Janeway took her First Officer's arm and in a gesture of trust and exhaustion, laid her head on his shoulder. 

*** 

Chakotay had picked up his book once more, his fingers caressing the tangles in its surface as it aged along with him. There was a spirit within this book belonging to his Captain, something as immovable as mountains. He knew what path to choose for he would follow her, wherever she led. Just as love's folly had followed her to the very edges of the universe. There were no words, no deeds, for love had lived, oftentimes, on much less. 

The path was clear, not written. He had gained more than he could ever lose for choosing the road of silent torment and pain where love did fall, like leaves in an autumn day. 

And he was content. 

__________________

**-The End-**


End file.
